“That man over there is a popular journalist,” said a pretty girl. “He is at the center of things. He had an idea for an article, but then he saw his idea on Prime Time Saturday.”
“I picked up a piece of cauliflower,” said the man who was her companion. “I knew it was a piece of cauliflower. But just for conversation I said to a man standing next to me ‘What is this?’ and he said ‘Oh, it’s a crudité.’ Crudité! Can you believe it? I mean to say, he was an American and he told me a piece of cauliflower was a crudité.”
“That petite woman over there is a popular figure in modern dance,” said the pretty girl. “She did the dance sequences in a very good movie, but the movie was a big flop. She is the only real artist in this room—she and the man over there who is playing the piano. He is a bad pianist playing bad show tunes. All men who play the piano are great artists.”
“There’s Bill Boggs,” said her companion. “Bill Boggs is the only sane man in America. He is wearing a jacket with double
vents. He is the only man in America who looks good in a jacket with double vents.”
“That man over there is a famous producer,” said the pretty girl. “I met him years ago. He took out a girl I knew then. He made love to her in the shower.”
“Right next door is another party,” said her companion. “A dinner party. People from a paper company. Perhaps they are very happy and will soon be eager to show it.”
“I have just remembered something,” said the pretty girl. “I once stood in this very room and a woman showed me twelve different ways to wear the same dress. She was from Japan. It wasn’t a very interesting idea.”
“Blythe Danner is standing over there talking to someone who could be a jerk or who could be Francis of Assisi,” said her companion. “I have no real thoughts on Blythe Danner.”
“That woman in the red cowboy boots once wrote a long article about Stevie Wonder,” said the pretty girl. “I admire all women, even when they haven’t discovered something as important as radium.”
“There is a reporter here from People magazine,” said her companion. “The same man, who lives in Greenwich Village, makes out our taxes.”
“All the people in this room care very much for each other,” said the pretty girl. “Look at how interested each one is in what the others are saying. I am sure they call each other up every day just to make sure that not one of them is running a fever.”
“Those two people are from Italy,” said her companion.
“They don’t know who the man is they are talking to. Slowly, and using on-the-spot sign language, he is telling them.”
“Unknown to me, someone took my picture,” said the pretty girl. “I can feel myself losing altitude. I can feel my halo evaporating in the clear winter air. I can feel my spirit taking a long walk away from me.”
“There’s nothing out there,” said the pretty girl’s companion. “There’s nothing out there except sometimes you see big rats—the kind that come from Norway. Or people in bootleg-cut jeans.”
“Rats have buck teeth,” said the pretty girl. “That is, they do unless they gnaw on something.”
“When I look at Rockefeller Center,” said her companion, “I say to myself, ‘Now, that’s a tribute to something.’”
“I knew a man who used to take three teaspoons of sugar every day in his morning coffee,” said the pretty girl. “Three teaspoons of sugar. While he was drinking it, he said, he felt like Atlas. But shortly after, he said, he felt as sluggish as a mole.”
“Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street,” said her companion. “I ran into a woman I used to know, and she had just spent the summer in Montana. She said, This summer and fall in Montana, four hundred and fifty-six thousand six hundred and twenty-three dozen eggs, two hundred and eighty thousand six hundred and twenty-nine chickens, and forty-eight hundred pigs were destroyed because the feed had become
contaminated with a chemical that causes cancer in animals.’ I didn’t tell her that that was not news to me.”
“Talk about sugar!” said the pretty girl. “I heard of a man who lived in Harlem and for breakfast he ate Hostess Twinkies and cola soda. Every day, he ate that, and every day he went out and committed a gruesome crime. When he was finally caught, he pleaded sugar rush.”
“When I look at the Empire State Building,” said her companion, “I say to myself, ‘Now, that’s another tribute, to an entirely different thing.’ When I look at the Empire State Building, I make a mental note of all the things I really need.”
“I took a trip to Port of Spain once,” said the pretty girl. “On a banana boat. I ate a lot of bananas, I was bitten by a lot of fleas, and a man who drank rum talked in my face constantly. For a long time afterward, it was no to bananas, fleas, and men.”
“The people here,” said the pretty girl, “don’t like to dance to the new Joe Jackson record, or the new Police, or the new Talking Heads, or the new Tom Petty, or the new Clash, and they don’t know how to dance to ska music. All the people here are older young white people. They like to dance to any Motown record from 1965.”
“Well, well,” said her companion. “Well, well.”
“Last night, I dreamed that I was at a party with all these people,” said the pretty girl. “The party was on the thirty-second
floor. I willed all the guests to go out on the balcony, hold their nose, and jump.”
“Well, well,” said her companion.
“I danced with that woman in the man’s suit,” said the pretty girl. “As I danced with her, I knew she was a woman in a man’s suit. And I danced with her as if she were a woman in a man’s suit. When the dance was over, she said, ‘I bet you didn’t know that I was a woman wearing a man’s suit.’ I didn’t say anything, but I thought, I bet you don’t know that a potato when cooked has only about a hundred and twenty-five calories.”
“Well, well,” said her companion.
“This is my last party,” said the pretty girl. “Tonight, as I was getting dressed, I said to myself, “This is my last party.’ On a cold night like tonight, I wear long underwear. Leaf-green-color long underwear. I said to myself as I was putting on my long underwear, ‘This is my last party.’”
“Well, well,” said her companion.
“The next time I get an invitation to a party,” said the pretty girl, “I will say to myself, ‘All those fish heads I have in the freezer—it’s time to make a soup out of them.’”
“Well, well,” said her companion.
—January 14, 1980